Marlee Grace Jordan, heart complications

Marlee Grace was a premature baby, born at 26 weeks and weighing only 1 pound, 12 ounces. She was transported to ACH two weeks after her birth because of a heart complication and a fungal infection. She was born with a hole in the major vessel leading to her heart and developed a fungal infection that traveled through her bloodstream to her brain.

At ACH, Marlee Grace was started on a cycle of antibiotics that lasted 36 days. After an MRI revealed that the infection was controlled, she was able to have surgery to repair the hole in her heart. For her mother, Mika, having her newborn baby in the hospital was hard.

“You never know from one minute to the next what is to come for your child,” Mika says. “As a parent, you never dream of seeing your child under those kinds of circumstances. You try and stay positive, but there are days it seems impossible.”

Mika and her husband, Brad, credit the ACH staff with saving her daughter’s life.

“We have had an amazing outcome to our story. Without the medical staff that was sent to us, none of this would be possible. They were God’s hands on earth,” Brad says.

Now 17 months old, Marlee Grace continues to make regular trips to ACH so doctors can check on her progress. Mika looks forward to those visits, saying the doctors and nurses are now like her family. When she is at physical therapy, Marlee Grace loves to greet everyone who walks in the door with a big “Hi!” She also loves to dance and clap her hands.

“If our story helps just one family, that’s all that matters,” Mika says.

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